Warmer Isabel Yap
Since summertime, no memory of you filters into my mind. What I do remember: cold watermelons cut into triangles, seeds and spit in my hands. The tang of salt in my eyes and beneath my toes, whipping through my hair. Crabs scurrying into holes. Crabs scurrying out of holes. Crabs roasted over fire and their hot white meat in my mouth. The tide pulling away from my shadow, the last friend of a fading sun. Coconuts. I’m singing, my single voice drowned by running water, as I bury my naked self and everything that has touched it under a million sands. Showers. Moons setting, rising, melting away. Then suddenly, like something scuttling over my chest, or grazing the back of my hand as it swims past – you, buried, consumed. Spat out and dreamed of; echoed, filled with, shackled to.
lvii